In short
The Osaka Amazing Pass is ¥3,500, not ¥2,500 — and it is an e-ticket with no physical card. The tourism board’s own English microsite still shows the old price. Osaka Castle doubled to ¥1,200 in April 2025. The hotel tax now starts at ¥5,000 a night, down from ¥7,000. And the Expo site at Yumeshima is not open to visit — the city publishes no public access.
Checked against Osaka Metro, Surutto KANSAI, Osaka Prefecture, the City of Osaka and the JMA, August 2026.
What is in this guide
- The Amazing Pass is ¥3,500, and there is no card
- The other pass is a different product entirely
- Metro fares start at ¥190, not ¥180
- Osaka Castle doubled
- The hotel tax now catches budget rooms
- The Expo site is not a place you can visit
- Two manners rules, and only one of them is real
- August is a heat-planning problem
- Three smaller things that are now wrong online
- What we could not verify
Most Osaka advice online is between one and three years out of date, and the errors are expensive rather than trivial: a pass that costs 40% more than quoted, a castle that doubled, a hotel tax that now catches budget rooms, and a headline attraction that is not open at all.
The Amazing Pass is ¥3,500, and there is no card
This is the single most-repeated error about Osaka.
| Price | |
|---|---|
| 1-day | ¥3,500 |
| 2-day | ¥5,000 |
| 1-day, Itami Airport version | ¥3,800 |
| 2-day, Itami Airport version | ¥5,400 |
Guides quoting ¥2,500 or ¥2,800 are quoting a tariff that no longer exists. The current pass is on sale from 25 March 2026 to 31 March 2027, covers unlimited participating trains and buses plus 41 facilities free, and is capped at four passes per transaction.
Two things to know before you buy. It is an e-ticket only — physical cards are gone, delivered to a smartphone, and sold essentially online. And Umeda Sky Building admits pass holders only until 15:00, while Kaiyukan is not included at all.
There is a sting in this one. The Osaka tourism bureau’s own English microsite was still showing the old ¥2,500 / ¥3,300 when we checked. So “check the official site” is not sufficient advice here — you have to check the issuer’s site, which is Surutto KANSAI, not the tourism board’s.
The other pass is a different product entirely
The Osaka e-Pass, now branded 大阪楽遊パス in Japanese, gets conflated with the Amazing Pass constantly. It is ¥2,400 for one day and ¥3,000 for two, and:
> Public transport such as trains and buses is not included in the price.
It covers 34 facilities by QR code, once each — and once across both days on a two-day pass, not once per day. It also carries a rule almost no English guide mentions: you must leave at least 30 minutes between entering one facility and the next. That single constraint decides how many sights you can realistically clear, and it is why the cheaper pass is not automatically the better one.
The rule of thumb: moving across the city, take the Amazing Pass. Walking a tight cluster, take the e-Pass.
Metro fares start at ¥190, not ¥180
| Zone | Distance | Adult |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | up to 3 km | ¥190 |
| 2 | 3–7 km | ¥240 |
| 3 | 7–13 km | ¥290 |
| 4 | 13–19 km | ¥340 |
| 5 | over 19 km | ¥390 |
These already include the barrier-free station surcharge. Yumeshima is charged separately, under its own table.
The Enjoy Eco Card is the day pass most visitors should actually consider, and its price depends on the day of the week:
- ¥820 on weekdays
- ¥620 on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays
- ¥310 for children, either way
It covers all Metro lines and all Osaka City Bus lines, and it comes with presentation discounts at about twenty attractions on the day you use it.
The maths: at weekends the ¥620 card beats four minimum-fare rides. On a weekday, ¥820 needs about four ¥240 rides. Both are achievable on a normal sightseeing day — which makes the Eco Card a far easier win than either tourist pass. Yumeshima is excluded from it.
Osaka Castle doubled
¥1,200 for adults since 1 April 2025, with a ¥600 band for high-school and university students and free entry for junior-high and under. Hours also moved to 09:00–18:00, last entry 17:30.
The ¥600 figure is everywhere online, and part of the reason is that the castle’s own site was still serving the old numbers to automated checks when we looked.
Two more admission corrections while we are here. Umeda Sky Building cut its child price to ¥500 for ages four to elementary, from 1 July 2024; adults are ¥2,000. And Kaiyukan runs dynamic pricing by date and publishes the price only through a calendar — anyone quoting a flat ¥2,700 is quoting a number the aquarium itself declines to publish.
The hotel tax now catches budget rooms
It changed on 1 September 2025, and both halves of the change matter:
| Per person, per night | Before | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Under ¥5,000 | no tax | no tax |
| ¥5,000–6,999 | no tax | ¥200 |
| ¥7,000–14,999 | ¥100 | ¥200 |
| ¥15,000–19,999 | ¥200 | ¥400 |
| ¥20,000 and over | ¥300 | ¥500 |
The exemption threshold dropped from ¥7,000 to ¥5,000 and every band rose. Ordinary business hotels that used to pay nothing now pay ¥200 a head a night.
One more precision: this is an Osaka Prefecture tax, not a city one. English sources calling it “the Osaka City hotel tax” are describing the right money under the wrong authority.
The Expo site is not a place you can visit
Yumeshima still appears on itineraries. The City of Osaka’s own post-Expo page designates three elements for retention — the Grand Ring, the Forest of Quietude and the Osaka Healthcare Pavilion — within a future redevelopment for which developers were still being solicited. It states no opening date and no public access.
The station exists and trains run there. The site it serves is a redevelopment parcel, not a destination, and nothing on the city’s page supports the claim that you can still walk the Grand Ring.
Two manners rules, and only one of them is real
Eating while walking at Kuromon Ichiba is fine. The market’s own site actively promotes tabe-aruki as its selling point and publishes no rule against it. (Kyoto’s Nishiki Market asks the opposite — see our Kyoto food guide.)
Touting in Dotonbori is a fineable offence. Osaka City has an ordinance regulating it, and it is not advisory. That is the citable Osaka manners story; the eating-while-walking one is not.
Street smoking is banned across the whole city, not only in marked zones.
August is a heat-planning problem
From the Japan Meteorological Agency’s 1991–2020 normals for Osaka:
| Mean daily max | Days ≥30 °C | Days ≥35 °C | Rain | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| June | 28.0 °C | 7.9 | — | 185.1 mm |
| July | 31.8 °C | 22.6 | 3.7 | 174.4 mm |
| August | 33.7 °C | 28.3 | 9.9 | 113.0 mm |
| September | 29.5 °C | 14.4 | 0.8 | 152.8 mm |
In August, 28.3 days out of 31 reach 30 °C, and nearly ten reach 35 °C. A street-food day in Osaka in August is a heat problem before it is a walking problem. June is the wettest month.
Three smaller things that are now wrong online
- The “no double-dipping” kushikatsu rule is not universal. It is real and documented, and Daruma still enforces it — but the largest chain moved to per-party dispensed sauce in June 2020, so at many outlets there is nothing to double-dip.
- Aizuya’s HEP NAVIO branch in Umeda has closed — its own site gives the final trading day as 28 June 2026.
- The 2026 Michelin guide’s new three-star went to Kyoto, not Osaka. Osaka’s gains were one new two-star, seven one-stars and nine Bib Gourmands.
What we could not verify
- Kaiyukan’s admission on any given date. It is published only through a booking calendar.
- The premium tier price for the e-Pass. Its page returned a redirect loop.
- Journey time from Namba to Nara, from a primary source. The fare is confirmed at ¥680, plus ¥520 if you take a limited express — the rapid express needs no surcharge.
Fares, fees and rules were checked against Osaka Metro, Surutto KANSAI, Osaka Prefecture, the City of Osaka and the Japan Meteorological Agency in August 2026. Osaka’s prices have moved twice in two years; check before you travel.
More Osaka: the travel guide, the pass that actually pays, where to stay, and the quiet places we could verify.